so.cl "Microsoft's social networking"

Microsoft's social networking experiment, So.cl, a site designed around sharing Web content pulled from Bing searches, is now available for all users. Launched in December and aimed at students, So.cl is not meant to compete with popular social networks such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. So.cl isn't a place to connect with friends and share moments from your lives.

Instead, So.cl is more like an image board where you post and share web-based content based on general interest categories such as cars, movies, and sports -- all of which is filtered through a built-in Bing search tool.

So.cl isn't for everyone and convincing users to fit this site into an already busy online life with Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn will be a tough sell for Microsoft.

Then again, So.cl doesn't appear to be a product built for mass appeal. The social network is still under the "Microsoft Research" banner and is very much a development project. You may find at times that links won't work, content won't populate your feed, and other functions will be limited. But if you're a hard core social networking fan and want to see what Microsoft is up to, here's a quick peek at So.cl.

What is So.cl?

So.cl began as, and, indeed, still is, an experiment in how social search can help with learning, as dreamt up by Microsoft Fuse Labs. Set up as a social network, at its core is a social search tool with Bing behind it. The user types in a search term in So.cl and, like with a normal search engine, you can choose to get results as videos, images, web or news. The results that are relevant to your needs can then be pulled into your feed, shared and used to create a rich post made up of a montage of all the different media types. You than have a perfect, scrapbook-like answer to your question or subject area.

What makes So.cl social?

By default, any searches made with in So.cl are public. The idea behind that is that other users can then discover rich posts that were created under the same or similar searches and therefore save themselves a serious amount of leg work as well as discover things that perhaps they hadn’t considered. By the same token, posts can become collaborative work.

Where are my friends?

The system on So.cl is a bit more like Twitter than Facebook with followers and the followed rather than a network of friends that you already know. The idea is that you can make new So.cl relationships based on having similar interests or having searched and researched in the same subject areas.

Of course, you can still link up with your real-world friends. So.cl allows you to sign in with either your Windows Live ID or your Facebook one and will search your e-mail address book for friends already on So.cl, in the case of the former, and will allow you to invite people from Facebook manually. You’re also welcome to post anything you do on So.cl automatically in your Facebook News Feed as well, but this is not the default option.

for more http://www.so.cl/about/faq